Posts tagged with 'event'

As we come to the end of 2014, looking forward to new devices running Ubuntu in our immediate future, it’s time for one last set of Hack Days of the year.

Next week, from Monday 8th December till Friday 12th we’re going to be having another set of Core Apps Hack Days. We’ve had a few of these this year which have been a great way to focus attention on specific applications and their dependent components in the platform. They’re also a nice gateway for getting new people into the Core Apps project and Ubuntu development in general.

The Core Apps are community maintained Free Software applications which were created for Ubuntu devices, but also work on the Ubuntu desktop. We welcome new developers, testers, autopilot writers, artists and translators to get involved in these exciting projects.

The schedule

As with previous hack days we’re going to focus on specific apps on each day, which we run from 9:00 UTC until 21:00 UTC. In summary our schedule looks like this:-

A QA treat

Creating core apps involves close coordination between developers and designers to provide the right set of features, high usability and appealing visuals. All these would be nothing without a suite of automated tests that are run to ensure the features are rock-solid and that no regressions are introduced with new development.

All core apps include Autopilot and QML tests that we are constantly expanding to increase test coverage. Writing tests for core apps is a nice way to get started contributing. All you’ll need is some Python knowledge for Autopilot tests or QML for QML tests. Our quality man, Nicholas Skaggs will be running a live video workshop on Wednesday Dec 10th, at 18:00UTC, as an on-ramp to learn how to create tests.

Join the fest

The Hack Days will be happening live at the #ubuntu-app-devel IRC channel on Freenode

The QA Workshop will be happening also live on Ubuntu On Air. You can watch the video and ask your questions on the same IRC channel.

We’ll blog more details about the apps each day next week with links to specific bugs, tasks and goals, so stay tuned!

As always we greatly appreciate all contributions to the Core Apps project during the Hack Days, but welcome community efforts all year round, so if this week doesn’t work for you, feel free to drop by #ubuntu-app-devel on Freenode any time and speak to me, popey.

Shortly before the submission deadline last night we had some small technical hiccups in the Ubuntu Software Store. This was fixed resolved very quickly (thanks a lot everyone who worked on this!), but we decided to give everyone another day to make up for it.

Please all verify that your app still works, everythings is tidy, you submitted it to the store and filled out the submission form correctly. Here’s how.

Submit your app

This is obviously the most important bit and needs to happen first. Don’t leave this to the last minute. Your app might have to go through a couple of reviews before it’s accepted in the store. So plan in some time for that. Once it’s accepted and published in the store, you can always, much more quickly, publish an update.

Once your app is in the store, you need to register your participation in the App Showdown. To make sure your application is registered for the contest and judges review it, you’ll need to fill in the participation form. You can start filling it in already and until the submission deadline, it should only take you 2 minutes to complete.

Here’s the final reminder. The App Showdown is almost over and you can win some beautiful devices if you get your app in tomorrow, Wednesday, April 9th 2014 (23:59 UTC).

Getting your app in is very easy: just follow these two steps.

Submit your app

This is obviously the most important bit and needs to happen first. Don’t leave this to the last minute. Your app might have to go through a couple of reviews before it’s accepted in the store. So plan in some time for that. Once it’s accepted and published in the store, you can always, much more quickly, publish an update.

Once your app is in the store, you need to register your participation in the App Showdown. To make sure your application is registered for the contest and judges review it, you’ll need to fill in the participation form. You can start filling it in already and until the submission deadline, it should only take you 2 minutes to complete.

The app showdown is still in full swing and we have seen lots and lots of activity already. The competition is going to end on Wednesday, April 9th 2014 (23:59 UTC). So what do you need to do to enter and submit the app?

It’s actually quite easy. It takes three steps.

Submit your app

This is obviously the most important bit and needs to happen first. Don’t leave this to the last minute. Your app might have to go through a couple of reviews before it’s accepted in the store. So plan in some time for that. Once it’s accepted and published in the store, you can always, much more quickly, publish an update.

Once your app is in the store, you need to register your participation in the App Showdown. To make sure your application is registered for the contest and judges review it, you’ll need to fill in the participation form. You can start filling it in already and until the submission deadline, it should only take you 2 minutes to complete.

There is lots of excitement around Ubuntu on phones and tablets. Especially with two handsets coming out later this year and features and more beauty landing every single week, it’s a lot of fun to watch the whole story unfold.

What many haven’t realised yet, is how easy it is to write apps for Ubuntu and that new apps are not only going to run on phones and tablets, but also on the desktop as well. To remedy that we put some work into making it easy to go out to events and give talks about Ubuntu and its app ecosystem.

What we have available now is:

improved presentation materials,

we made it easier for newcomers to step in, learn and present,

we reach out to app developer communities and our LoCo teams at the same time.

We have two great sets of events coming up soon: the Ubuntu Global Jam coming up in just 2 weeks and soon followed by the 14.04 release and its release parties.

Interested? So how do you prepare? Easy:

As somebody who can organise events, but might need to find a speaker: Ask in #ubuntu-app-devel on Freenode or on the ubuntu-app-devel@ mailing list, to see if anyone is in your area to give a talk. Ask on your LoCo’s or LUG’s mailing list as well. Even if somebody who’s into programming hasn’t developed using Ubuntu’s SDK yet, they should be able to familiarise themselves with the technologies quite easily.

As somebody who has written code before and didn’t find the Ubuntu app development materials too challenging, but might need to find some help with organising the event: Ask on the loco-contacts@ mailing list. There are LoCos all around the world and most of them will be happy to see somebody give a talk at an event.

Whichever camp you’re in:

Check out our docs. They explain what’s required to make the event a success.

Talk to us. Just comment on the blog post and we can surely help you out somehow.

Let’s make this happen together. Writing apps for Ubuntu and publishing them has never been easier, and they’ll make Ubuntu on phones/tablets much more interesting, and will run on the desktop as well.

Announcing the latest Ubuntu App Showdown contest!

Today we are announcing our third Ubuntu App Showdown! Contestants will have six weeks to build and publish their apps using the new Ubuntu SDK and Ubuntu platform. Both original apps and ported apps, QML and HTML 5, will qualify for this competition.

Categories and prizes

This App Showdown is going to be very special, because we will have four dedicated categories in which you can participate and win a prize.

QML: original apps written in QML or with a combination of QML and JavaScript/C++

HTML5: original apps written using web technologies, be it pure HTML (and CSS/JavaScript) or with platform access using Apache Cordova

Ported: apps ported from another platform, regardless of the technology used

Chinese apps: apps in this category will have to be original and specific to China and the Chinese culture. They will be judged by two native experts in our jury.

The set of prizes will consist of a Nexus 7 (2013) per category for QML, HTML5 and ported apps.

The top two Chinese apps will receive a Meizu device each.

Review criteria

Apps in the HTML5/QML/Ported categories will be reviewed by a jury composed by an international team of five judges:

Jono Bacon, Ubuntu Community Manager

Adnane Belmadiaf, Ubuntu HTML5 expert

Lucas Romero di Benedetto, Ubuntu Community Design Team

Nekhelesh Ramananthan, Ubuntu Core App Developer

Joey-Elijah Sneddon, OMG!Ubuntu editor

The judges for the Chinese apps are:

Shuduo Sang?Software Engineer in Canonical PES

Joey Chan, Ubuntu Core App Developer

Jack Yu, Ubuntu Kylin Lead/Ubuntu Member

The jury will judge applications according to the following criteria:

General Interest – apps that are of more interest to general phone users will be scored higher. We recommend identifying what most phone users want to see, and identifying gaps that your app could fill.

Convergence – apps that have a convergent layout that expands to dedicated tablet mode or optionally run well on the desktop will also be scored higher.

Features – a wide range of useful and interesting features.

Quality – a high quality, stable, and bug-free application experience.

Awareness / Promotion – we will award extra points to those of you who blog, tweet, facebook, Google+, reddit, and otherwise share updates and information about your app as it progresses.

Chinese culture – apps optionally submitted in the China category will be reviewed with the same criteria above, plus their relevance to Chinese users of the app. This can be by providing access to Chinese services, being related to Chinese culture or being generally useful to somebody in the People’s Republic of China.

Learn how to write Ubuntu apps

To make it easier for you to get started with writing apps for Ubuntu on the phone and tablets, we’ve set up a week packed with video streaming tutorials where experts from the Ubuntu community will teach you how to use Ubuntu platform technologies to write apps.

Ubuntu App Developer Week is a week of sessions aimed at enabling and inspiring developers to write applications that scratch their itches. Our goal is to give all attendees a taste of the wide variety of tools on the Ubuntu platform that can be used to create awesome applications, and to showcase some applications that have been created and explain how they were put together.